I said to a policeman not long since in the city of Savannah, “Have you any colored men on your force?” “Not one; and if a colored man were placed here, every one of us would resign.” I then asked him about the colored people in the South and in that city. He said, “They are orderly and well-behaved; we have no fault to find with them.” “How are they getting on in the schools?” “They are beating our white children in the public schools.” “How is that?” “Well, our people do not altogether patronize the public schools, and the colored mothers take much more pains to have their children prompt and constant in attendance than the white mothers; and when the children of this generation come to stand up face to face ten years hence, we are going to be put to shame by the intelligence of many a black boy that to-day walks our streets barefooted and ragged.” That is the statement of a man who said he would resign if a colored man was put upon the police force of which he was a member. There are many things about the colored people we must be patient with. They are ignorant, and ignorant beyond what we realize. It is an ignorance which we must not be surprised at; it is an ignorance which we must be patient with. It is our duty to give them education—and not merely the duty of us who are here to-night, not merely of this generation, but of generations to come. It is a duty that is patriotic beyond what we are apt to consider. At the close of the war we gave to the colored population the ballot; but it has been the proud claim of New England always that back of the ballot must be intelligence, and that it is not safe in a republic that he who casts the vote that decides the fate of the nation shall cast a vote that he cannot read. Yet to-day there is that enormous vote of the South, a vote which the man casting it cannot read. We sometimes wonder that, in a state like South Carolina, where the colored population is almost double the white, it is possible that they should be deprived of the franchise; but you can judge how timid a man is as to his rights when he cannot read his ballot nor count it after it is cast. Therefore, as I say, that question must be a slow one as it works itself out; but it is as citizens of this nation, as patriots, that we must see to it that intelligence is furnished to that people at the earliest possible day, to enable them to both read and count the ballots which they cast. _—Henry D. Hyde, Esq._